Brussels, 23 April 2020 - The necessary health, quarantine and social distancing measures taken to fight the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, are taking their toll on economies around the world. This strategy - crucial to the fight - coupled with monetary and budgetary expansions of unseen magnitudes, will have lasting and damaging economic consequences due to the sudden and legally imposed shutdown of our economies.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, governments, in an attempt to rekindle growth, took on new debt. Central banks have printed money like never before, with their balance sheets ballooning in recent years under the “quantitative easing” or “unconventional monetary policy” labels. Ordinary citizens, individual investors and pension savers, ended up footing the bill, and are likely to do so again.